BASEBALL

BASEBALL; How Did Dick Ravitch Get Into This Mess?

By CLAIRE SMITH

Published: August 14, 1994

In this, his first taste of labor relations, baseball-style, Richard Ravitch must wonder if he has walked into a Greek tragedy. Or comedy.

After all, major league baseball's capacity for wounding itself in the foot with ill-timed work stoppages is enough to make anyone in the game wonder whether to laugh or cry. And there were undoubtedly such disparate reactions on Friday when the players made good their threat to strike in response to the owners' insistence on a salary cap.

Such an impasse is nothing new for old baseball labor warriors like Donald Fehr, the players' chief negotiator. But not so with Ravitch, who was hired as president of the owners' Player Relations Committee in 1991. Reinventing the Business

Ravitch was brought in to do more than work out a new collective bargaining agreement with the players. He was also asked to reinvent the way baseball owners do business with one another by getting the big-market teams to agree to have some of their wealth trickle down to a dozen or so still-unidentified clubs that insist they are in danger of going under.

Ravitch picked up the theme of the have-nots and did so with such fervor that he brought the big-market clubs into a new revenue-sharing agreement earlier this summer. But that agreement only goes into effect if and when Ravitch secures a salary cap from the players.

The strike is the players' response to that effort. But even as the game remains idle, some will count each day without baseball as a sign Ravitch has succeeded in uniting the usually fractious owners. Yet, Ravitch will also be held accountable if resolve cancels out resolve and, for the first time since 1904, the World Series is not played.

It's not exactly a win-win proposition. This Ravitch knows. Yet he has more than managed to hang on to his commitment, using it to shield against the sort of self-doubts almost all of his predecessors eventually succumbed to when faced with the players' resolve. Keeping a Sense of Humor

A sense of humor doesn't hurt, either.

"My wife had a very close friend call and say, 'There are three people I wouldn't like to be right now: O. J. Simpson, Roger Altman and Dick Ravitch," said Ravitch, who married Betsy in May.

"Then my son called me from London the other day and said, 'I saw you on CNN. Why the heck are you involved in this thing?' said Ravitch, who has two grown sons from his first marriage. "I said, 'You little so and so.' My sons are the ones who talked me into listening when I was first approached by baseball. So they are barred from complaining."

Ravitch needs no such ban. "Everybody asks me whether I sleep or not; I sleep like a baby," he said. "It's a lot of responsibility. But I'm fine." The Caring Public Servant

Such a positive public nature exists even though the anger and angst over the strike increases exponentially with each passing day. But Ravitch's professed calm does not surprise those who came to know him in his previous endeavors and who swear by him as a pragmatic, but caring, public servant, a wily and successful businessman and, most important, someone at ease even when on the horns of a dilemma.

"This will be mother's milk for Dick because basically he is a public man with a great deal of private shrewdness, intelligence and judgment," said Leonard Garment, a prominent Washington attorney who befriended the 61-year-old Ravitch when both were fund-raisers in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's successful campaign for the Senate in 1976.

How shrewd and intelligent? Ravitch, who was raised on the Upper East Side, made a personal fortune when running his family's construction business and turned around the once-troubled Bowery Savings Bank. He marshaled $8.5 billion in capital financing for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that was used to rebuild the subways, largely eliminating the constant breakdowns and delays that plagued the declining system in the 1970's. Labor-Friendly Past

Ravitch assumed the position of M.T.A. chairman in 1979. He found himself in the middle of a highly volatile 11-day strike by the Transport Workers Union that stranded millions of commuters in 1980. Yet, Ravitch has since been praised for the thankless role he played, most notably by Edward I. Koch, who was then the city's mayor. And his name is spoken of fondly by Transit Workers Union officials, which certainly would be in keeping with Ravitch's upbringing and long involvement in the labor-friendly Democratic Party.

"That wound up being about the only thing that Ravitch didn't have success with," said Doug Schoen, who worked with Ravitch and the M.T.A. "But that was a difficult situation." Endless Patience and Energy

Garment believes Ravitch's diverse successes aren't just good luck. "Ravitch has a rather low threshold of boredom because there are not that many things that catch his interest at this point," Garment said. "But when something does get his interest, he has a sort of endless patience and a huge amount of energy. And that makes him the type of person who can put things together and be amazingly clear as to what is at the heart of a complicated problem."

Will that play in baseball, especially since Ravitch politically is the antithesis of some of the rock-ribbed Republican owners he represents?

"In a political sense, I have views that are probably different from many of the owners," Ravitch said. "But that's neither here nor there. The pursuit of this objective is absolutely correct."

But what of the players, who find themselves in the position of staving off, of all people, a Democrat?

Schoen believes the basis for this particular irony can be found in Ravitch's niche in the moderate to conservative wing of the party. "As a mayoral candidate, Ravitch's was a businessman's approach to government with a humane overlay," Schoen said. "He is not somebody who would be cutting just for the sake of cutting. But he is a man who believes that a government betrays its promises to the people when it does not fairly and competently spend the taxpayers' money."

Substitute management for government in that equation and you may detect Ravitch's argument for more economic sanity in baseball. 'I Take Full Responsibility'

Not surprisingly, the players do not endorse Ravitch's new economic order. But, said Lauren Rich, an assistant general counsel with the union: "I think he's basically a well-intentioned guy. But I also think that early on, someone seized his agenda from him, or pushed him into this agenda."

Ravitch said that's not true. "I take full responsibility for the proposal and I think that was an appropriate proposal to make," he said.

Ravitch still must contend with a rebellious -- and undefeated -- varsity. And while trying to convince the striking players, he must hope the owners who vowed solidarity really mean it. Like George Steinbrenner of the Yankees, who last week publicly ridiculed Ravitch's revenue-sharing rationale and charged that the only ones who will make money now are the lawyers doing the negotiating.

Ravitch chooses to ignore such frays. "It's all part of the turf," he said. "But if this system doesn't get changed, it will rapidly cause a further shrinkage in baseball's revenues. I just hope that when it's all said and done, I will have made baseball an economically healthier place. I hope that very much."

Photo: Richard Ravitch, speaking with reporters yesterday: "When it's all said and done, I will have made baseball an economically healthier place." (Associated Press)